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A deep, familiar voice breaks in onjunkie I’ve been staring at unseeingly, and up into Cooper’s cal up

"Heather," he says, with friendly nonchalance, as he folds himself into the plastic chair beside me

"Um" That’s all I can think of to say Swift, huh? After a lot of azes withjunkie He looks, in his scruffy but forh to eat Better than Ho Hos, even Cooper, I mean Not the junkie

"So," he says, in the sao cold all over, then hot It’s totally unfair, the hold this guy has over me And he’s never so much as asked me out! Okay, he asked me to move in with him, but, hello, that was out of pity And I live on a whole separate floor With a whole separate set of locks on the door Which I’ve never actually used, but has he ever bothered to find that out? No!

"Nothinghe can’t see howaround inside my T-shirt "Did, um, your dad call you?"

"No," Cooper says "Your friend Patty did When she cada told her what happened Patty had the baby with her, or she’d have cootten all aboutroom clock, I see that it’s after two "Well"

"What she couldn’t quite explain," Cooper says, "is what, precisely, happened"

Which is when it all co out

I don’t want for it to I don’t uess that’s why Cooper’s such a good detective There’s so in his deep voice that justyou know…

Well, okay, not everything I did e to keep the whole part about what Jordan and I had done on Cooper’s hallway runner under wraps Wild horses aren’t going to drag that infor to, you know, peel off Cooper’s clothes with my teeth, of course

But the rest of it just coush, the way the hot chocolate in the dorda’s poured thewith the lip-synch the night before, when I’d first begun to suspect that Christopher Allington was Elizabeth and Roberta’s killer, and ending with the geraniu over the part in bethere his brother and I made the beast with two backs in his foyer

I’ve overheard Cooper in action with his clients a couple of times The washer/dryer is on the same floor as his office, just off the kitchen, and I’ve been in there washing my control top underwear (I only wear it on special occasions, like custo seminars or cultural diversity awareness workshops) when he’s met with people who’ve hired him He talks to them in this totally calm, careful voice…

…a completely different voice, it turns out, than he uses on his nonpaying clientele

"Heather, are you insane?" He looks really uy?"

It would be nice to think that the reason he’s so angry with me is because my near brush with death has finally s for me